It hasn't been a good week to be an employee at Motorola Mobility with Google's hardware making arm announcing additional layoffs. Motorola Mobility has announced that it will shed 10% of its global workforce (roughly 1,200 employees). The cuts are in addition to the 20% reduction that Motorola Mobility announced last summer.

Motorola reportedly informed workers via e-mail this week that it would be instituting a new round of layoffs impacting workers within the U.S., China, and India. Motorola said that it was optimistic about new products it was developing, but costs are too high and it's still losing money.

A spokesman for Motorola said, "These cuts are a continuation of the reductions we announced last summer. It's obviously very hard for the employees concerned, and we are committed to helping them through this difficult transition."

Droid Razr Maxx HD

The cuts Motorola Mobility made last August affected about 4,000 workers. At the end of 2012, Motorola reportedly have 11,113 employees not counting the Motorola Home business. Motorola Mobility has continued to post losses with a loss of over $500 million in Q3 of 2012. Motorola also posted a loss of over $350 million during Q4 2012.

The Wall Street Journal reports that if Samsung gains majority control over the Android environment, Google would pour more resources and money into Motorola Mobility. Google executives have reportedly called Motorola Mobility an insurance policy against Samsung taking over the market. In the event that Samsung grows rapidly, Google could integrate Motorola Mobility with its Android software unit according to sources claiming to be familiar with Google's plans.

Mobility has been loosing money since the year after the Razr originally appeared. Should a company continue to loose money indefinitely? Mobility is still in existence only because Motorola Home profits kept it afloat long enough to be bought by another company (Google). During this time Mobility kept adding people while Home kept laying off people - does that make sense? The division that was losing money was hiring people but the division that was making money was laying people off.

If a software engineer can only make $30/hour in this market they must not be very good and probably aren't worth hiring. The software people I know are making $100k+/year and are not hourly unless they are contracting by choice then they are making $100/hr.

That is true for profitable companies, but unprofitable ones will almost always have layoffs. In 2012 Mobility lost $500M in Q3 and $350M in Q4. Who didn't see the additional layoffs coming? I am surprised that it is "only" 1200.